When do we learn the concept of privacy? I think for me, a child of the 1950s, it wasn’t something introduced very early. I think I absorbed it over time.
I am the eldest of three girls. Financial realities for the middle class in those days meant we shared a bedroom right up until I went away to college. Three girls in one bedroom, sharing one bathroom, means almost no privacy. Not in the realm of bodily privacy, that of our clothing and personal belongings, our correspondence, our diaries, our reading choices, our anythings.
Ma did take time to establish firm ethical boundaries for us, boundaries which we carried into adulthood. We were never to wear each others’ clothes nor accessories without explicit permission. We were to respect privacy of the U.S. mail unless one of us had something she wanted us to read. Diaries were completely out-of-bounds, even to our parents. And if one wanted total bathroom privacy, that was to be respected above all.
Our bodies, our minds and our personal belongings held a certain, sacredness when it came to privacy. Ma made that the law. Privacy was a valuable commodity in that time and place where it was hard to come by.
But privacy was simpler in those days as well. There certainly existed doctor/patient and attorney/client privilege, but they weren’t concepts widely understood until the preponderance of TV medical and legal procedurals. Technology hadn’t advanced to the point of Internet privacy in all its modern forms (CIPA, HIPA, and God remembers what else). We didn’t have to deal with GPS locators built into our personal cell phones (which we, of course, didn’t have) and cars. We didn’t have PCs or affordable, user-friendly spyware that could follow us around physically or in cyberspace.
In those days children weren’t warned about inappropriate touch in elementary school. Girls were taught as young ladies not to let boys make physical advances on our persons. Now it’s stranger-danger and bad touch and “no means no.”
In those days, if the doctor called your house with medical information about one family member, a detailed message could be left with anyone in the house. Now, the federal Privacy Act prevents anything but the most innocuous of messages be left.
In those days, and even into the 1970s, your school records could be, and were, sent to your parents. If you were away at college, you had to call home to find out your semester grades. If you were a minor (then under 21) a parent was required to be on your bank or checking account. Now our financial records are protected by elaborate user names and convoluted passwords.
Privacy in the 21st century is so much more complicated.
Social media has made privacy practically an anachronism. With the advent of Facebook, Instagram and other sharing sites, we now know details of others’ lives from the ridiculous (look what I’m eating for dinner today!) to the humiliating (look what an ass I’m making of myself in public today!).
And now our privacy is faced by a new assault: the grain-of-rice-sized microchip. It has been introduced as an alternative to the company ID/secure entry card by 32Market in Wisconsin. Inserted just under the skin of the hand, this chip is encoded with personal information that determines whether or not an employee gains access to the workplace or any specific region within the workplace. It also contains some information that makes it possible for employees to purchase goods from company vending machines with the swipe of their hands.
This technology is being touted as the next great thing! But I have my doubts. What information, and how much of it, will a microchip contain? I guess that depends on the purpose for which the chip is being used. It could include your vital statistics (age, sex, race, weight, height, eye color), but it could also include medical data (think LifeAlert), or financial records (credit card and Social Security numbers, bank and checking account numbers, PINs, etc.).
We already are aware that “the bad guys” have figured out ways to scan our credit cards and ATM cards while they are still in our wallets. How will they access our vital information from inside our bodies?
Today on our local community on-line message board a parent was inquiring about getting these chips injected into her infants and toddlers, much like we chip our pets. To say that alarms and whistles went off in my head would be an understatement. Big Brother and government interference have already reared their ugly heads with Amazon profiling and demographics gathering. This notion of universal, cradle to grave, human chipping has me practically apoplectic.
My body and my brain are my own. Where my body is at any given time is my business alone. My thoughts are my own unless I choose to share them. My physical health is my own. The Constitution protects my home, car and belongings from the prying eyes of others without cause. Even the fluids in my body are protected from unlawful gathering. And these same civil rights extend to my children, and their children, and theirs, ad infinitum.
Some will say that I resist this technology because I resist all technology. That is not the case. Some will say that I shouldn’t resist this technology because it makes life easier. That IS the case.
This technology makes it easier for our lives to be an open book to those who would abuse it, be they thieves or spies. You may make the cases of “well, what about this?” Tracking children and Alzheimers’ patients. Using them as dog tags for soldiers. (Sure, I’ve thought about beneficial applications.) I object to this technology on general principle, that it cavalierly throws away a civil right too hard-fought for.
Ask Alex Wubbels, the Utah nurse who was publicly manhandled by an over-zealous cop who would violate the precious civil right to privacy of her unconscious patient. Is privacy a civil right worth putting your own body on the line for? Damn straight it is.
Thoughtless, systematic microchipping of the American population is a dangerous erosion of our civil liberties I will not abide. As long as I live I will not allow this “brave new” technology into my body. We should not abdicate something so valuable for the sake of a little ease.
To quote my husband, “nothing difficult is ever easy.” To quote myself, nothing this important should ever be easy.
